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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884756">If I could be your Scarlet Letter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin'>ShiDreamin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Pregnancy, Set between Naruto and Boruto, Vanilla, prose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:27:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,210</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884756</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who are you,” he had spat, “the Hyuga heir or a nobody?”</p>
<p>Both, Hinata thought, let her be both.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If I could be your Scarlet Letter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When the world was a little bigger and Hinata a little smaller, it had seemed as though she could be swallowed up at any given moment. The Hyuga clan was massive, an amalgamation of people that created a never-ending flood. Where one man began another man ended, and it was between the silks and cottons, the netting and knives, that Hinata had often found herself in a little cupboard under the kitchen sink, listening to their head chef’s humming.</p>
<p>It was safe under there; between wooden cabinets that smelled of oil and sesame. No people meant no yelling, no fighting, no ninjutsu she could barely understand. Their cooks were clever and strong people, yet they were kind, gentle folk at heart, and they took to her immediately. When the clan elders came looking for her, she was nowhere to be found, stuffed away in another room with fresh rice and sweet omelets to snack on.</p>
<p>It was a good routine; one she had adjusted to too quickly. Her training, or rather her lack of it, became abundantly clear far too fast. They had found her once, fried shrimp bits on her face, and hauled her away from the kitchen to the room her father worked.</p>
<p>“Who are you,” he had spat, “the Hyuga heir or a nobody?”</p>
<p>Both, she thought, let her be both.</p>
<p>She had cried, and sputtered out an answer, and wished desperately that she had inherited not eyes that could see the beyond but instead wings that could lift her to the future she so strongly envisioned.</p>
<p>Those wings, though she could not see them, and though they could not flap under her hands, had felt so real. Training was difficult, so miserably difficult, and though she bore the title of heiress, of pure blood, of the main house, it meant not a thing when she spent her time in the afternoon coughing blood onto the dirt, her knees stained from being thrown into the ground again and again, relentless.</p>
<p>It would take time, her dressmakers assured her. There were no perfect humans, no people born with wings that would allow them to soar, but time heals all. If she were to keep at it, with that smile and that grit, they were certain she could be a princess worth loving.</p>
<p>Then Negi had walked into her training grounds and those wings were snipped off, right as they were about to break the skin.</p>
<p>There were things in the house she did not know that she would come to understand only years later, when she no longer wore pleated empire dresses and lace edged hair bows. Secrets that adults whisper to themselves, perhaps because they worry their children are too young to know the truth of what this world is really like. That life is only as bitter as melons, and that one only needs honey and ice to make it a child’s dish.</p>
<p>That being Hinata Hyuga was not a curse.</p>
<p>It was not as though she did not try, and that perhaps, was the part that hurt the most. Her personal guards often tutted her, brushing away her hair to get a better look at the blooming bruises on her face. She seldom spoke without a cut on her lip, a scar on her cheek, an ugly blot of purple on her eye. It healed, of course, wonderfully fast with the Hyuga personal healers always on call.</p>
<p>She had wanted those scars, though. Wanted to hide the purple and blue lines that cracked along her arm, angry and demanding but <em>true</em>, real, of her creation. Wanted to savor the painful spikes along her leg when she worked so terribly hard her clothes came out muddied and split. Wanted her father to see her from his office up high, so terribly high, so that he would know that she too would have wings.</p>
<p>Hinata had been eight, with a bloody lip and tattered robes, when the men had tried to steal her from her bed in the middle of the night. She had fought, had tried to remember the proper steps and the proper form, and all it had earned her was laughter.</p>
<p>“Is this really all the Hyuga clan can be?”</p>
<p>They were cruel words, by cruel men. She had stumbled, and she had shaken, and they had laughed because she was a girl, an heiress but a child. Though the world itself may wrap the title of head around her shoulders, Hinata would have rather slept in bamboo leaves and woken up to the smell of fresh rice and the humming of an old song.</p>
<p>Hinata knows that now. Knows that she had wings that flew her to greatest heights, knows that she is here now, overseeing a village with the man she loves, knows that she has a future that she’s soared to, so gently curling within her. She can smile, and laugh, and on the hot summer days, cut up some bitter melon and serve it cold.</p>
<p>She is happy today is such a day, the sun’s beating rays unable to deter the laughter of Konoha’s children.</p>
<p>“It’s a little hot to be outside, isn’t it?” Her husband asks. Hinata giggles, joyous, when Naruto kisses her at the end of his words, rubbing their cheeks together.</p>
<p>“You’re quite hot yourself,” she teases. When he laughs with her, a rumbling noise, she can lean in to tuck her face into the crook of his neck. He smells like soy sauce and vinegar. Home. “Did you cook?”</p>
<p>“I did.” He pats her stomach, gentle, always. “Enough for three.”</p>
<p>They eat rice with sesame and egg, crispy pork with pepper flakes. She cuts up the melons as he the ice, just in time for the sun to begin its descent over the mountain. He rubs her tummy, pressing his fingers into her side as she laughs and retaliates, and they are young, then, alone as one.</p>
<p>“I love you,” he smiles against her mouth, chuckles into it, overflowing with love. Naruto kisses her like she is the sky, marking stars along her body, her wings, her future. He kisses that bump extra fondly, rubbing his palm in circles. “I love you too.”</p>
<p>“He cannot hear you yet,” Hinata whispers, though she says the same late at night, when it is just them and Naruto has yet to return from his duties. She wonders, when the moonlight pours in and the shadows encroach, the sound of past steps in the hallway, who he will become. Whether he will be born with eyes that track the skies or wings that will bring him to it.</p>
<p>A Hyuga heir or…</p>
<p>“He will be perfect,” Naruto says, sweeter than any melon, and she kisses him all the more for it.</p>
<p>When he is born, she will hum him songs and cook him fresh rice. He will be energetic, she thinks, loud and hungry and rambunctious like his father, like his mother, when she had the courage to be so. She would let him be that, wild and free, and when his wings sprout she will call him her treasure.</p>
<p>For now, she kisses her husband a moment longer, and finds herself happy to fly towards the future they share.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hurrah~ A naruhina fic revolving around my fav Naruto girl<br/>I got back into Naruto recently thanks to a zine I modded for (Shikatema zine, vol 2 in creation period rn!) and I have been wanting to write a Hinata piece ever since I found out she "won" so.... here we are folks<br/>psssst if anyone sees a hinata or naruhina zine hit me the HECK up i love this song</p>
<p>Judge my life choices on <a href="https://twitter.com/shidreamin/"> twitter </a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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